Number
of people freed from totalitarian dictatorships
by precision use of American military force
under George W. Bush: 50
million in just two years

Number
of people freed from totalitarian dictatorships
by anti-American Bush-bashing
terrorist-appeasing whining elitists: Zero. Ever.

...

The problem seems to
me to be the definition of "free speech".
Liberals define it as anything they want to say
or do that opposes America. I say "speech" ends
where "action" begins. Once you pick up a gun
for the enemy, throw a rock at a cop during a
"peace" march, send money to a terrorist
organisation, or travel to Baghdad to block an
American JDAM with your ass, you have crossed the line from free speech to costly action.

...

Saying the War on Terror is all about al-Qaeda is like saying we should have fought the Japanese Naval Air Force after Pearl Harbor. Not the Japanese Navy, not the Japanese Army, not the Empire of Japan -- just the Naval Air Force.

...

Complaining about the "waste" when human embryos are destroyed instead of being used in medical experiments is a lot like going to a funeral and complaining about the waste of perfectly good meat.

...

Blaming CO2 for climate change is like blaming smoke for the fire. CO2 is largely a following, not a leading, indicator of a rise in temperature.

...

Cavalier's First Theorem: Every time, Liberals will fight to protect the guilty and kill the innocent, while Conservatives will fight to protect the innocent and punish the guilty.

Cavalier's Second Theorem:Liberals are just Socialists who want to be loved... then again, Socialists are just Communists who lack the courage of their convictions.

Cavalier's Third Theorem:Any strongly moral, hawkish or pro-American statement by a Liberal will inevitably be followed by a "but."

For quite some time, it's been "common knowledge" on the Right that Obama and the Democrats are fated to lose big in 2012. So why does confidence seem to be increasing among Democrats? Well, I believe I know why Democrats think they have a shot at retaining -- even increasing -- their power in November, and I'm sorry to say that they may have a point.

By November, Leftists hope to have so many people convinced that they need Democrat politicians to continue funding entitlements (by soaking "the rich," of course) that it will form an unstoppable -- and permanent -- voter majority. I think $5 per gallon gas, coming to a pump near you this summer, may be the tipping point... which is why the Democrats were happy to see the Keystone XL pipeline killed. If the Leftists are correct, so many people will be unable to subsume their immediate need for government help to the good of the country and the hope of a better economy not controlled by the government "central planners" that Democrats will get four more years to continue our slide towards Greece.

A friend of mine wrote to tell me that he was going to support Newt Gingrich for President, because he's a great debater and a smart man who knows history. Those things are true, and Newt does have a shot at the Republican nomination... but he hasn't gotten that title yet. I'm not ready to give up and let the Party elites and the media pick the candidate. I wrote back:

Newt is a Republican, but not really a Conservative. Sure, I'd rather see him in the Oval Office than Obama, but you can pick a random name out of the phone book and I'll say the same. He's great in a debate, but he could probably argue from the Democrat viewpoint just as well and just as passionately.

Newt has no core beliefs (except the belief that he should be President); he'll do whatever he thinks will get him and his party more votes. That includes pandering to Leftist causes without regard to right or wrong, constitutional or unconstitutional. He thinks the government needs to control global warming and health care -- not because he believes in global warming and "free" health care, but because he believes in bigger government. He believes in some kind of amnesty for illegals ("legality if not citizenship").

His bias against Conservatives shows in his actions. He dismissed Paul Ryan's reform plan as "right-wing social engineering." A couple of years ago, he backed moderate (some even say Liberal) Republican Dede Scozzafava against the Conservative in NY23, when a Conservative would have helped Hoffman get the nomination -- and then she dropped out of the race and supported the Democrat. Remember that? That was Newt's chosen candidate, endorsing the Democrat.

And as for being the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, Newt said in a 2008 interview with George Stephanopoulos,"We are at the end of the George W. Bush era. We are at the end of the Reagan era. We're at a point in time when we're about to start redefining ... the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs." In other words, he doesn't think the Republican party ought to be like Reagan or Bush anymore; they ought to be more centrist, compromising with the Left as he did.It's too early for me to give up on the possibility of getting an actual Conservative in the White House -- not one primary has been held yet; not one vote has actually been cast. If Newt can rise in the polls from 2% to 22% in a couple of months, so can Bachmann or Santorum.

I originally posted this on Word Around the Net guest blogging for Christopher Taylor, on vacation this week.

Listen to these Wall Street protesters, this "Occupy Wall Street" movement that (as the media gleefully tells us) is sweeping the country. Who the heck are these dirty, ignorant people living in deliberate squalor on our streets, and what do they want? The answer is that (excepting the decrepit old hippie contingent desperately trying to recapture the Summer of Love, the union thugs and professional protesters) these are our children, the generation that will run the country after us. We did this to them, or allowed it to be done. They are as we have made them, and what they want is to remain children forever.This is what comes of a generation told by their parents and teachers that everyone is equally special, that we live in a world where there are no winners and losers. This is the result of teachers refusing to correct errors in red ink for fear of damaging the students' delicate psyches. This is what happens when our education system spends decades (and billions) preaching to children that capitalism is evil because some people do get left behind. When we teach children that everyone is a winner, they all grow up to be losers. Why work hard when everyone wins anyway?Look at these people. With no thought given to sanitation, food distribution, medical issues or sleeping arrangements they swarm in parks and sit on sidewalks bemoaning the fact that the gravy train ends at 18, or 21. Or maybe 26. Or ever. They've always been cared for by others, and on the cusp of adulthood, they have no idea how to become adults. They demand that someone feed them, take them to the bathroom, entertain them and tuck them in at night. At the age of two, that's cute. At twenty-two, it's pathetic. And yet Democrats, including the President, encourage them -- encourage dependence on government and envy of the rich. A dependent population is a biddable population.They want banks abolished and free education guaranteed because many of them will soon graduate (or have recently done so) with no idea how to get a job so they can pay the student loans they owe. Perhaps if we had forced them to take classes in Business Administration or Accounting instead of majoring in Angry Women's Studies and Medieval French Poetry, they would. The protesters want borders abolished because they want others to come cut their lawns, cook their food, wash their dishes and make their beds. They don't even realise that illegals take menial jobs because they can't get any other kind, not because they have a racial predilection for landscaping and vacuuming. They want a guaranteed "living wage," free housing and free health care, even for the unemployed. With no idea how to earn an honest buck, a government-mandated check is the only way they'll be able to survive in a real world they've never been trained to face. They can't understand that someone has to provide all those things, either directly or through paying taxes. A collectivist system, under which people are forced to work for the benefit of others, has had many labels: fascism, communism, totalitarianism, even slavery. These protesters have never been taught that charity only has moral value when it's voluntary.Many years ago, it was sometimes said of those who majored in English that they should memorise the phrase "Would you like fries with that?" before graduation. For this generation, an English degree would be a step up -- as would a job at McDonald's. But they've been well trained to reject anything as lowly as a McJob, haven't they? They've been taught to hate capitalism itself, though it has provided them with everything they now demand as a "right." They've been spoiled in both common senses of the word -- pampered into uselessness and allowed to rot. We've let that happen to them. But at least those long-ago English majors would have understood the spectacular, stunning irony of hipsters posting pictures of themselves protesting "corporate greed" in designer clothing on Facebook using their iPhones.We've seen violence spreading across Europe, as cash-strapped governments are forced to pass "austerity measures" to avoid bankruptcy. That's what happens when entire countries spend beyond their means after promising everything to their people, and borrow to pay the bills instead of cutting down on wasteful spending. Think it can't happen here? That's what these children fear the most: the loss of the "good life" they've come to believe they are owed by the world. When it happens -- and it will -- their fear of and inability to survive in the adult world will become toxic. When an entire generation of spoiled children loses their entitlements, they'll react as children often do when their toys are taken away: with anger.We'd better focus on teaching the next generation after this properly, because too many of the kids about to enter the adult world will be dependent on their own children for support after their parents have passed on.

So Obama used information that was obtained from Gitmo detainees who have never been brought to trial, including men who were waterboarded like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to send American forces into a sovereign nation without even notifying its leaders and without seeking the approval of the United Nations, in order to assassinate -- not arrest -- Osama bin Laden, killing him outright regardless of his rights and without even giving him a military tribunal, much less a trial. For the life of me, I can't think of anything former President George W. Bush himself would have done differently, up to that point. Well done, President Obama. Too bad you just violated every statement you have ever made regarding every aspect of military and diplomatic operations, not to mention the ideals of most of your hard-core supporters on the Left. Now if you could just sign off on some tax cuts, you could use leftover 2004 "Re-Elect Bush" campaign posters in 2012. At least you'd be recycling.

Personally, I couldn't be more pleased that Osama bin Laden is dead. That sick, rotten piece of excrement has been a thorn in America's side, not to mention that of the entire civilised world, for more than two decades now. Obama definitely deserves credit for giving the order to take him out, although a more gracious man would have given the lion's share of the credit where it's due -- to the military, to the CIA and to the policies established by his predecessor. Still, justice has been served and every American should be glad. Don't let the pseudo-pious Left talk you out of this well-deserved moment by saying Christians shouldn't celebrate the death of this evil man. Just remind them that Proverbs 21:15 says, "When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers."

It may be surprising (to some) that everything the Left has been telling us for nearly a decade is wrong. Apparently, keeping detainees at Guantanamo Bay is a good idea. The information they have to share, though up to ten years old, is surprisingly useful after all. Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques do, it seems, yield helpful results. And best of all, it appears that war is indeed the answer, especially when the question is "What do we do when we find bin Laden?" He brought his war to us. Now we've returned it.

The Left is correct about one thing, however. Killing bin Laden will not magically solve all of our terrorism problems. Others will step up to take his place, though they may not be as inspirational as he was, nor will they have his former air of invincibility. Bin Laden's death was an extraordinarily strong psychological blow to al Qaeda and other terror groups, but if we don't follow up they will recover, in time. Instead of putting General Petraeus behind a desk at the CIA, Obama ought to give him carte blanche to carry this war to our enemies like never before. Let's hope that in his new position, he can at least ensure that we continue to get actionable information from captured enemies at Guantanamo Bay, as we have been doing since 2002.

Meanwhile, I hear Obama is thinking about buying a ranch, so he can drive a pickup truck and cut brush while wearing a cowboy hat on the weekends.

The moratorium on offshore oil drilling Obama is still pushing despite a Federal judge striking down the original version is neither emotion-driven nor knee-jerk, but cold and deliberate. There isn't a chance that the companies who own those drilling rigs can let them sit idle for six months -- they lose millions of dollars every day they're not running. Already Petrobras is offering to tow the rigs down to Brazil and put them back to work -- and the Export-Import Bank of the United States is loaning Petrobras $2 billion with which to do it! Ex-Im Bank is (for you Liberals) "the official export credit agency of the United States federal government." That's our tax dollars going to destroy our own domestic oil industry, since once those rigs are gone and put on a new contract they will never come back.

Guess who also invested heavily in Petrobras back in February, increasing his holdings to about $900 milllion worth of stock at the time? Our old pal George Soros -- the closest thing we have to a James Bond villain in real life. That's not to suggest a conspiracy in which the Deepwater Horizon rig was deliberately sabotaged, but Soros knew that his tool Obama would sieze upon any opportunity to shut down offshore drilling, which accounts for about a third of our domestic oil production.

Choking off our own oil supply is suicide -- it will bring massive increases in oil and gas prices, making the $140-per-barrel prices we experienced for a short time two years ago seem tame by comparison. It will drive what's left of our economy into a death spiral from which we might never recover. Everything we do, everything we use, depends on oil, including pens, furniture, food production, computers, car tires and traffic lights -- not that there will be much traffic with gas prices hitting $8-$10 per gallon.

A moratorium on offshore drilling while allowing (paying for!) our oil industry to move to Brazil does not just affect oil production, it's the end of it -- and therefore a moratorium on the American economy. If it's not stopped, it can only lead to the destruction of this country as we know it.

Today, President Obama is hosting a "health care summit" at Blair House in an attempt to convince Republicans to sign on to his disastrous health care takeover proposals. It's a trap, of course -- the entire show will be staged to present sob stories of people who purportedly died or went broke without government-run health care, which only the stinky, mean Republicans are blocking. It's utter foolishness, of course -- the Democrats until very recently had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and could have passed any bill they wanted while powerless Republicans only gnashed their teeth and complained. But they didn't, because they know that only 25% of Americans want the current health care proposals to pass -- most of them hard-core union supporters, government workers, die-hard Obamaniacs and Leftists of one stripe or another.

Some say the Republicans should refuse to attend this obvious trap, but they won't. What they would do, if I had my way, is deliver the following speech to Obama and his minions. It'll never happen, but a man can dream, can't he? If someone did "man up" and deliver such a speech, I'd be willing to bet he would win any election for which he ran in a landslide.

"First, those of you who claim that we want to 'do nothing' about health care are either lying or ignorant, as you all know perfectly well that Republicans have been proposing some simple reforms that will go a long way toward making health insurance more affordable and accessible for everyone. A summary of our proposals is even already linked on your own White House web site, Mr. President. In case you merely forgot to read it, here are a few of the highlights of our health care reform plan:

1. Meaningful tort reform to stop out-of-control lawsuits that drive up insurance costs for doctors, which is the main reason they charge patients so much.2. Eliminate the ban on buying insurance across state lines to increase competition by a thousand-fold.3. Allow people to purchase their own health insurance, through a health savings account, instead of tying it to their employment.

"The 'party of no,' as you call us, is absolutely right to say 'no' to a government takeover of the healthcare industry when a few simple changes will allow the free market to lower costs for everyone.

"Second, that '30 million uninsured' figure you tout is a lie, too. Hey, whatever happened to the other 15-20 million uninsured people you Democrats used to weep over? Did they vanish? In any case, two-thirds of that 30 million are comprised of people who fit into one or more of the following categories:

a) young people who do not want insurance and will not apply for Obamacare.b) rich people who do not want insurance and will not apply for Obamacare.c) people who already qualify for Medicare/Medicaid but have not applied, and will not apply for Obamacare.d) people who have switched jobs and whose new insurance has not yet kicked in, none of whom will apply for Obamacare.

"So you want to destroy our entire healthcare system, with which 83% of Americans are either 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied,' for the sake of maybe 8 to 10 million people, most of whom are between jobs and who will be better served by job creation than an expensive government health care takeover? You want to force all of us to accept third-world standards of care and spend hundreds of billions of dollars we don't have in the process? Well, we have only one thing to say to that.

Just in case you aren't a nuclear physicist, 3%-5% purity is all the enrichment (refinement) of uranium-235 one needs to run a nuclear power plant. 90% purity is what you'd need to build a high-yield, compact modern nuke Technically, anything over 6% purity works well enough for a large, crude, "dirty" bomb -- you just need more mass with less purity. But the enrichment process that purifies uranium up to 20% is most of the work needed to get to 90%. Once you have the capability of refining uranium to the 20% mark (highly enriched uranium or HEU), you just keep refining it over and over.

If Iran is not stopped, they could have enough 90% enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon by the end of summer -- that is, if this isn't all a sleight-of-hand trick to cover for Iran's obtaining weapons-grade uranium or functional weapons from North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or China. Iranian leaders keep forewarning the world that they will "punch the arrogance (of Western powers) ... in a way that will leave them stunned" on 11 February -- only three days away. Iran used to be Persia, after all -- the country where chess was likely invented. Whether the Iranians are making their own (and are willing to settle for a lower level of enrichment) or buying uranium, we might not have to wait long to see one of the following:

1. A nuclear explosion in either the Dasht-e Kavir or Dasht-e Lut desert2. A nuclear explosion in Tel Aviv

The former would be a claim to dominance over the entire Middle East, sparking off a more open and frantic nuclear arms race with Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia among others. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak told an Arab summit almost a year ago, in March 2009, "A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today." One can exchange the word "Arab" for "all" and the statement is still true.

The latter result of Iran's enrichment process would very likely be the opening salvo of a devastating nuclear war. In chess terms: the first puts us all in check, the second, checkmate.

It would almost be amusing, if it weren't so sickening, to watch the same Left-wingers who smugly stated that 9/11 was all Bush's fault because "it happened on his watch" act so quickly to deflect any criticism of Obama's lax policies regarding terrorism -- when we're allowed to call it that.

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to light his underwear on fire aboard a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, it was evidence of a total failure of security procedures and checks. No one said this attempted terrorist attack was the Obamateur's fault, though. We mad Conservatives tend to blame attacks on the people who actually commit them, as strange as that may sound. However, Obama's Homeland Security is a joke, riddled with political motives and politically-correct attitudes. Here are the facts: the terrorist walked right onto an airplane despite being on a Federal watch list, a lone male with no checked luggage traveling one-way on a ticket bought with cash after his visa was denied in Great Britain and his own father reported him to the US embassy in Nigeria for having become radicalised in Yemen. Meanwhile security was no doubt occupied strip-searching a white-haired, blue-eyed grandma from Boise. This should indicate to all but the most partisan of Liberals that our security procedures are totally ineffective, focused on generic, random searches while actual terrorists aren't bothered because no one wants to be accused of racial profiling.

In the end, the bombing was only thwarted by passengers acting to preserve their own lives. Instead of crying about how mean we are to blame Obama's policies, how about you Liberals get your collective head out of his butt and join us in demanding he protect the country of which he's supposed to be President? Instead, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano hit the Sunday talk shows to crow about how well "the system worked" because after the event took place, law enforcement agencies were notified with record speed. Was that supposed to be a joke? If Obama does not fire Napolitano and find someone whose approach to terrorism is proactive rather than reactive to take her place, then he will have failed America in this area as well -- continuing his so-far unbroken string. Perhaps someone who might notice a shared factor among all the terrorists we're supposedly fighting... naah, it would be politically incorrect to notice that they're all radical Muslims. Better to keep searching those grandmas than double-check all Muslims traveling alone, one-way, without luggage, paying in cash...

Instead of seeing an actual counter-terrorism approach to security, I'm afraid to consider what invasive and useless security rules travelers will be subjected to next, given that we've all had to remove our shoes ever since Richard "Abdel Rahim" Reid tried to set his sneakers on fire in flight. Make sure you wear clean underwear when traveling, just in case.

The flaw at the root of Liberal thinking is the same thing that makes Liberals so arrogant. They know their ideas can work on paper, where you can leave out the human factor. The idea that every member of a society will produce to his best capacity while only using what he really needs is a fine one, as long as you leave it to insects or robots and not try to force flawed, imperfect, self-aware human beings to live by such a system. People will hoard goods, engage in black markets, slack off work whenever they can and bribe officials to avoid unpleasant duties. Liberals seem to think that people can be made perfect if the right laws are passed, and if you teach them young enough. But to make that system work in the real world, you have to enforce the laws with heavy police presence, cameras everywhere, indoctrination and secret police... and you end up living in the novel 1984.

The idea that you can simply tax wealthy people and corporations to get money works fine... as long as those entities don't find a way to hide their money, avoid the tax using influence with politicians and officials, or pass the tax along to consumers. In the real world, that's exactly what happens -- plus it destroys the only valid incentive for hard work. But taxing wealth works on paper, so obviously it's a perfect idea. Again, the only way to make it function in the real world is total government control, which ends with everyone (except the ruling class) being equally destitute and miserable.

The problem starts with the way college students, especially, are taught to examine a problem: by taking it out of context, disconnecting it from outside influences and consequences. If you tax entity A you will always generate X amount of revenue, on paper. But in the real world, every action has consequences and repercussions, everything is connected to everything else, and human nature cannot simply be left out of the equation. Entity A will hide his money in tax shelters, charge Entity B more for his goods, fire Entity C to save paying his salary, bribe Entity D and make campaign donations to Entity E's re-election campaign to avoid paying that tax out of his own pocket.

Real life is far more complicated than Liberals seem to comprehend. That's why their solutions to the problems we face are usually both simplistic and unrealistic. But they work on paper, so we're the stupid ones.